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We should retire Aaron's number

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21–30 of 45 posts

Re: We should retire Aaron's number

#21
post #17

I'm surprised there are no virtual cemetaries. A company (a known Internet entity like Archive.org, WikiMedia or W3C would be best, not a startup that will pivot away in 3 years) could offer for a fixed fee to take your blog, freeze it in time, and publish it online forever.

> I'm surprised there are no virtual cemetaries.

There are several obituary sites, they're one step away from that. And in a sense portions of http://reocities.com/ are exactly that, for instance: http://reocities.com/SunsetStrip/1838/ I'm committed to keeping that alive as long as I can afford it. So far so good.

Re: We should retire Aaron's number

#25
post #6

While the idea is novel, domains are virtual real estate. I don't think it's in anyone's best interest to retire domains/addresses. There are many more sane ways to make all of the content easily accessible indefinitely.

Isn't that exactly what a grave site is? Real estate permanently set aside for a deceased person.

Re: We should retire Aaron's number

#27
I've often thought that the Internet Archive would be a good entity for this. I would happily pay a large one-off fee to cover domain name renewals and static hosting in perpetuity. I don't know how such a fee would be calculated - the cost of 100 years of .com renewals at the lowest negotiable fee perhaps?

Re: We should retire Aaron's number

#28
post #27

I've often thought that the Internet Archive would be a good entity for this. I would happily pay a large one-off fee to cover domain name renewals and static hosting in perpetuity. I don't know how such a fee would be calculated - the cost of 100 years of .com renewals at the lowest negotiable fee perhaps?

You could just start your own domain name registrar. Family can transfer the name after death or you could transfer there before you die. Add a small link to the bottom of the page to donate to support re-registering the name ad-infinitum. The registrar collects donations to keep it going. Maybe add hosting too. Unfortunately getting your own registrar company would cost $50-100K from what I've read plus $8K annual dues.

Re: We should retire Aaron's number

#29
post #22

Nice thought Dave. Aaron did already address this in his "If I get hit by a truck..." post: http://www.aaronsw.com/2002/continuity And Sean is most definitely on the case. But please give him some time and space.

The footer on that post should really be changed.

Re: We should retire Aaron's number

#30
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take this sentiment and jump forward 100 years. What's left? I suspect this will happen to any namespace after long enough. Domain names, Twitter handles, Facebook URLs, whatever. Once enough real estate is taken up with immobile monuments to the dead, the living will have to move on to something else. I also think this will happen well before 100% utilization. After some point, the number of collisions you hit when…

The first number ever retired in all of sports was Lou Gehrig's, in 1939. By the 100th anniversary of that ceremony, the Yankees will have retired about 25-30 numbers. The active roster requires 40+ free numbers < 100. What happens when they run out?

> What happens when they run out?

2 digits of base > 10?

3 digit numbers?

Hardly a tricky problem to solve...

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